This weekend was the first game.
“You know?” he said.
“Sure, sure, I know.” Oh no, she thought; oh please no, he’s not—”What about it?”
“You going?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t really planned on it.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Wow,” he said quietly, as if not going were unthinkable. “Well... wow.”
She didn’t offer him any help. She couldn’t. It wasn’t that she hadn’t dated before; it wasn’t that she believed she was an ugly duckling, although her face was a little long, her mouth a little too wide; it wasn’t that she thought Kyle was ugly, because he wasn’t.
It was—
“So,” he said, walking backward ahead of her, the switch still in his hand, “Leuman and some guys, you know what I mean, he’s ... we were going to drive down, you know? I kind of figured maybe ... you know?’’
—because too many of them thought she was something like a trophy. Something to show off because she was so big. A few cracks, a few giggles, not a whole lot of fun.
She stopped. “Take off your boots.”
He gaped. “What?”
Her head cocked, her expression hardened. “Take off your boots and ask me again.”
He sputtered and looked around as though asking an invisible audience if they knew what was going on because he sure didn’t. Then, to her astonishment, he checked behind him for traffic, looked back toward town, stood in the middle of the road on his jacket and took off his boots.
Awkwardly.
But he took them off.
Doing her best not to smile, she listened to his grumbling, wondering what his father would think if he could see him now. Marcotte Dovinsky owned Dove’s Department Store, on the corner of Fourteenth and Madison, smack in the middle of downtown, practically the geographical center of Vallor. The oldest, largest store in town. Three-piece suit, pocket watch, hair that looked like it had been slicked back with oil, and an attitude that did its best to make everyone else feel small.
Kyle, as far as she could tell, was exactly the opposite, most of the time.
When he finished, he walked straight up to her, the top of his head near level with her eyes. She had never realized how short he really was. Compared to her. And how round his face was, pleasantly so. How big his eyes were.
Watch it, she warned; watch it.
He looked up and grinned. “So? This some kind of power thing or what?”
“Are you still asking?”
“Sure I’m still asking.”
Stocking feet, looking up at a girl, that dumbass grin on his face, no embarrassment at all. And definitely not his father.
She shrugged. “I guess.”
Satisfied, he nodded once, walked back to his boots, sat on his jacket, and pulled them on. “You’re crazy, Gillespie, you know that, right?”
“Could be.”
He waved off an offer to help him to his feet, dusted off the jacket, slung it back over his shoulder, and said, “Come on, I’ll walk you the rest of the way. At least to the creek.”
“It’s almost a mile,” she answered, not really protesting.
“No big. I need the exercise.”
Two miles out total, two miles back; she figured he’d be dead on his feet by the time he got home.
“Okay.”
“Just do me a favor, okay? Let’s not stop to watch the horses.”
* * * *
4
In the late 1930s someone in Vallor got the idea that Roosevelt’s WPA should pay for the new town hall and police station. Although few believed it would happen, it did. Now half the town wished it hadn’t.
It was a rococo monster of large-block granite and pillars and high windows and ornate lintel inscriptions better suited to a community three times the size. The vaulted hall immediately inside the triple front doors was tiled in swirled marble, inlaid with the state and town seals, lit by a chandelier that would have been more at home in a French palace whose owner never gave a thought to practicality. The city offices were down a corridor to the left, the police offices down a corridor to the right; directly ahead, a fan-shaped staircase leading up to the second level where the courts were. And the mayor.
Even crowded it sounded hollow.
Arn Baer stood on the sidewalk, just around the corner on Seventeenth Street, out of the flow of the lunchtime secretary and clerk flow. A few nodded to him, a few called him by name, none stopped to pass the time. He never wore a uniform, braids and studs and belts and sharp creases. He let his men do all the strutting and posing. After ten years as chief, he believed that his suit was uniform enough. They knew who he was. Hell, everyone knew who he was.
Which was why he couldn’t decide what to do now.
The call from the school had torched his temper, and he was out of the office and on his way to his car before he had even figured out how, exactly, he was going to handle Margaret. Skipping school in the middle of the day. Bold as brass, walking right out without even looking back.
Did she really think no one would notice, that no one would call him?
He glared at the traffic, glared at the miserable clear sky, glared at his polished shoes and figured maybe this wasn’t the time to confront her. Step through the front door now and he’d probably throttle her. No sense talking to her mother, either. Working at the bank like Vonda did, until she dropped that job quick to take on a partner and open that bookstore, Vonda believed in independence for women, and that included their teenage daughter.
He stuck his hands in his trouser pockets, and slumped back against the wall.
Women, he was positive, were going to be the death of him.
Five minutes later one of his deputies ran up to him and said, “Chief, you’d better come with me.”
“What now?”
“We’ve got another one.”
Suddenly the afternoon wasn’t so warm anymore.
* * * *
5
“You weren’t supposed to do this,” Kyle complained.
The entrance to the Burgoyne ranch was a whitewashed split-rail arch. The driveway went some fifty yards in before forking at the base of a large willow—to the right, the drive led to the back of the ranch house; to the left, to the stables and barns. It would not have been out of place in Wyoming.
“Oh, stop it,” she scolded lightly.
The split-rail fence extended eighty yards or so east and west of the entrance, and when they reached the westernmost corner, she leaned on the fence, Kyle fidgeting behind her. Through a smattering of tall broad pines to the left of the house she could see someone perched on a white paddock fence just beyond the stables, probably Mr. Burgoyne by the white western hat, and the horses chasing each other across the grass.
Back and forth.
She frowned.
Back and forth.
Kyle finally came up beside her, hands in his pockets, nodded toward the animals. “You ride, huh?”
“Sometimes. I help Mr. Burgoyne once in a while. The stables and all.”
He chuckled. “Must be easy, huh? You’re as big as they are.”
When she glared, he brought up his hands. “Hey, I didn’t mean that. I meant tall, you know? Easier to get on and stuff.” He shrugged and put his hands back. “That’s all I meant. Jeez, Gillespie, you’re touchy.”
I wonder why, she thought. Years of jokes and tricks and people exaggerating when they look up, trying to look me in the face. How’s the weather up there, kid; you must be a hell of a basketball player. I wonder why?
Then, for the first time in a long time, she muttered, “Sorry.”
“No sweat.”
She pushed away from the fence and led him up the road. A glance to her right to check the horses again, but she couldn’t see them now. They were blocked by the willows and birch that lined the crooked Oakbend Creek bed. It was kind of weird though, the way they moved. Keeping in a bunch, not kicking up their h
eels, not trying to nip one another’s flanks.
A glance at the sky, but no sign of a storm.
“You know,” Kyle said, “for all those horses, they sure were quiet.”
* * * *
6
Les couldn’t take it anymore. The damn things spooked him, and he swung stiffly to the ground, told himself he was being an idiot, and took his time walking over to the stables—two, parallel to each other, a dozen stalls in each. Once inside the first, he checked on an old roan Fran had taken in out of pity when the owner wanted to put the poor thing down because she couldn’t gallop much anymore. As if growing old and getting slow was a crime.
The roan poked her head over the stall gate and whickered at him.
“Hey, girl,” he said, opening the gate and easing his way in. “Let’s take a look at that leg, okay?”
The left hind leg was lightly wrapped, a sprain when the animal had tried to turn too quickly last week. It was, in more ways than one, a pain, but she was lucky, at her age, the bone hadn’t snapped.
She stood patiently while he stroked her flank, stroked the leg, and wrinkled his nose against the pungent smell of the ointment.
It took a moment to realize the wrapping was too loose.
“You been trying to break out?” he asked, and shook his head. It didn’t take a minute to strip the bandage away, but it did take a minute for him to believe what he saw.
“Damn,” he said.
The swelling wasn’t down, it was gone, with no discoloration or, when he passed a hand over it, apparent tenderness.
“Now how,” he said, “did you manage to pull that trick off, lady?”
* * * *
7
She was on her front lawn, the old woman was, long gray hair loose and flying, wearing only an old pair of panties and a bra.
She danced across the grass, scrawny arms high, legs stiff, face to the sky and her eyes closed as she sang.
Chief Baer stood on the sidewalk and shook his head sadly. “What’s that, Rafe, eight? Nine?”
Deputy Rafe Schmidt checked the notepad he kept in his breast pocket. “Fourteen.”
“Jesus, that many?”
He didn’t wait for confirmation. Rafe was a little short on the personal touch, but no one ever argued with his record keeping. A sigh, a glance at the folks gathered on neighboring lawns despite admonishments to get back inside, and he stepped onto the lawn.
“Mrs. Grauer?”
The old woman ignored him. Still dancing. Singing quietly to herself.
“What the hell is that song?” Rafe wanted to know. As far as he was concerned, if it wasn’t rock ‘n’ roll, it wasn’t worth remembering, much less listening to.
“ ‘So Rare.’ “ Baer answered. “One of the Dorsey brothers. I ain’t heard that one in a hundred years.” He took another step. “Mrs. Grauer? It’s me, Chief Baer. You want to stop a moment and talk to me?”
He counted to five.
She stopped, out of breath but still singing.
He counted to five again.
She opened her eyes, saw him, and screamed.
* * * *
8
Just beyond the Burgoyne ranch, Jackson Street rose over a low bridge so unobtrusive that motorists who didn’t know the area seldom realized it was there. Ten feet below was Oakbend Creek, twenty feet wide and running shallow.
Kyle leaned over the chest-high wood guardrail. “Sucks, doesn’t it.”
Sharon agreed. There were places, though not here, where the creek used to be deep enough to swim in. Now it was shallow enough all over that walking across barely got your feet wet, even in the pools. She turned away and hugged her books closer to her chest.
Across the bridge on the other side of the street was a low and wide two-story house whose front lawn needed mowing, whose wraparound porch needed a good sweeping. A small, gold-and-black-lettered sign near the road told passersby that taxes and estates and other financial services were available inside.
Used to be, anyway.
Kyle followed her gaze. “Not home yet, huh?”
She shook her head. “Nope.”
“He ever coming back?”
She didn’t know. The last postcard she had received from Mr. Bannock was a week ago. From New Orleans. No mention of him ever coming back to Vallor at all.
“Wife never came back either, huh?”
“No.” She didn’t like to talk about Patty Bannock. The separation and swift divorce had shocked her, and leaving town with Joey had stunned her.
“Oh, well,” he said. “That’s the breaks, I guess.”
That he didn’t sound sympathetic didn’t surprise her. His mother had left Vallor when he was only four, and he had had something like four stepmothers since. The first three hadn’t lasted very long, and there were already rumors flying about the fourth.
He shifted his jacket and looked back toward the tracks. The gentle rise and fall of the road made the going appear more difficult than it was. “You remember,” he said, scratching an ear, “that party that summer?” He smiled. “Seemed like the whole world was here, remember?”
She did.
Patty and John had thrown a seventh-birthday party for Joey, and not only did it seem like half the town had shown up at one point or another, but a ton of relatives from all over the country, too. Not Mr. Bannock’s; his people were all dead. They were Patty’s, and spent every second fussing over the kid. Mr. Burgoyne had brought over a couple of his smaller, tamer horses for the kids to ride; Chief Baer, in a rare decent mood, had parked a patrol car on the road and let the kids turn on the spinning lights, use the siren, a couple of times call in to the station on the radio; Kyle’s Stepmother-of-the-Day had too much to drink and nearly stripped naked; even Mr. Trout had wandered down from his place at road’s end, his white beard and long white hair making the kids think Santa Claus had come early; she and Mag had snuck glasses of wine from the grown-ups’ table and chugged it behind the house—Mag had thrown up, and she had had a splitting headache for the rest of the day.
Not to mention some old guy, one of Patty’s people, who kept hitting on her all the time, thinking, because of her height, she was a lot older than she was.
Actually, now that she thought about it, it was kind of cute. In a sick sort of way.
Kyle cleared his throat. “Going back, I guess,” he said, taking a step in that direction.
“Oh. Well. Thanks.”
“No sweat.”
Good Lord, he wanted to kiss her. She knew it; she just knew it.
He took another step. “School, right?”
“Right.”
“Okay.” He nodded and walked away, stopped at the end of the bridge and said, “You weren’t kidding about Saturday, were you?”
“What about it?”
“The game.”
“Oh. No.” She grinned. “Wear your boots.”
It took him a second to get it; when he did, he laughed, waved, and walked off. Faking a limp for a few steps just to show her the sacrifice he had made. Turned, waved again, and moved on.
Without really knowing why, she watched until he began to sink beyond the first low rise. When she turned away and looked down at the creek, she felt...not sad, not really empty, just not... right.
She thought she heard Grandma laughing.
“Knock it off,” she muttered. “It isn’t funny.”
Still, all in all, she felt kind of strange and nice inside, and more than a little nervous. Mag, of course, would think it was great and would probably insist this was a great excuse to head down to Dove’s and empty their bank accounts. That was always her response to most good news— head for the nearest clothing department and raid her purse.
Sharon giggled, made a face, and waggled her fingers at Mr. Bannock’s house as she went by. Home soon, she thought; soon and safe.
Maybe she ought to get her brother to—
The long rolling explosion startled her so much she dropped her books.
Automatically she looked up, through the thin and thick branches looking like cracks in blue ice.
In the Mood - [Millennium Quartet 02] Page 12